Housing Scheme against Emigration

Emigration could even be countered by affordable housing. MEP Tibor Szanyi spoke about one of the most crucial program points of European socialist parties in the TV show ATV Start on Wednesday.

The housing crisis is one of the biggest problems in Europe and even in the world. To reduce this in the European Union, an independent support fund would be created by the left-wing parties, including MSZP, said the European Socialist MEP in the TV show. According to Szanyi, there is a need for a joint program, because after the economic crisis, simultaneously to in-work poverty, housing costs have increased more than incomes.

“Why are sublease prices so high, why does a flat cost up to 200,000 forints a month in Budapest today?” the MSZP politician asked. "This price also shows that there is huge demand for this," he said, adding that building high-quality municipal rental housing could break the unrealistically high rental rates, too.

“Today, a young person has no chance of achieving the goal that his parents still could, that is, to move to a bigger, better home than they did,” he said. However, the right to housing is not a commodity, it is a fundamental human right,” Szanyi stressed. The Socialists therefore propose that the two major EU support funds be made suitable for the financing of social housing, with a contribution from Member States or municipalities, of course.

Very few social rental houses are built from EU money, he said. Since March, there has been a collection of signatures in the EU, which is about not including such types of housing in the deficit of member states, that is, making them quasi deductible from the budget.